Hetty Wesley eBook

“Omen, monster,
prodigy!
Or nothing is,
or Jove, from thee.
Whether various
Nature’s play,
Or she, renversed,
thy will obey,
And to rebel man
declare
Famine, plague
or wasteful war . . .
No evil can from
Thee proceed;
’Tis only suffered,
not decreed. . . .”

He gazed from the careful handwriting to the horizon
beyond his window. Why had he fished out the
poem from its drawer? She, the writer—­his
child—­was a wanton.

CHAPTER V.

Hetty had found a patch of ragged turf and mallow
where the woodstack hid her from the parsonage windows;
and sat there in the morning sun—­unconsciously,
as usual, courting its full rays. Between her
and the stack the ground was bare, strewn with straw
and broken twigs. She supposed that her father
would send for her soon: but she was preparing
no defence, no excuses. She hoped, indeed, that
the interview would be short, but simply because the
account she must render to him seemed trivial beside
that which she must render to herself. Her eyes
watched the hens as they scratched pits in the warm
dust, snuggled down and adjusted and readjusted their
wing-feathers. But her brain was busied over
and over with the same thought—­“I
am now a bad woman. Is there yet any way for
me to be good?”

Yet her wits were alert enough. She heard her
father’s footstep on the path twenty yards away,
guessed the moment which would bring him into sight
of her. Though she did not look up, she knew
that he had come to a halt. She waited.
He turned and walked slowly away. She knew why
he had faltered. Her mind ran back to the problem.
“I am a bad woman. Is there any way for
me to be good?”

Half an hour passed. Emilia came round the rick,
talking to herself, holding a wooden bowl from which
she had been feeding the chickens. She came upon
Hetty unawares and stood still, with a face at first
confused, but gradually hardening.

“Sit down, Emmy.” Hetty pointed
to a faggot lying a few paces off.

Emilia hesitated.

“You may sit down: near enough to listen—­”

’Here
I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne,
let Emmy bow to it.’

“You were reciting as you came along.”
She raised her eyes with a grave smile. “Shall
I tell you your secret?”

“What secret?” asked Emilia, reddening
in spite of herself.

“Oh, I have known it a long while! But
if you want me to whisper it, you must come closer.
Nay, my dear, I know very little of the stage—­perhaps
as little as you: but, from what I have read,
it will bring you close to creatures worse than I.”

Emilia was scared now. “Who told you?
Have you heard from Jacky?—­ no, he couldn’t,
because—­”

“—­Because you never told him, although
you may have hinted at it. And if you told him,
he would laugh and call it the ambition of a girl
who knows nothing of the world.”